1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor that has high reliability in moisture resistance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, multilayer ceramic capacitors have been used under increasingly severer environments than the past.
Taking into account such a situation, a multilayer ceramic capacitor, disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-100544, is proposed to satisfy good temperature characteristics and good lifetime characteristics. The disclosed multilayer ceramic capacitor includes a dielectric layer made of a dielectric ceramic composition, inner electrodes sandwiching the dielectric layer, and outer electrodes electrically connected to the inner electrodes. The dielectric ceramic composition is made of two or more types of ceramic particles containing predetermined constituent elements at different concentrations.
However, the multilayer ceramic capacitor disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-100544 has the drawback that IR (insulation resistance) degrades when a voltage is applied under environments at high humidity and high temperature. In particular, the size of the multilayer ceramic capacitor is getting smaller and the number of the stacked dielectric layers and inner electrodes is getting larger in order to obtain high electrostatic capacitance, IR degradation becomes significant.